IAPE Evidence Blog

The Gazette (Mon­treal)
BYLINE: BRUCE OWEN, Win­nipeg Free Press

Win­nipeg, Canada

Miss­ing evi­dence: Judge may let man out on bail for Christmas

Con­victed mur­derer Frank Ostrowski could spend his first Christ­mas in 23 years at home in the com­pany of fam­ily and friends instead of inside prison walls.

The 60-year-old grand­fa­ther, con­victed of a 1986 drug hit and sen­tenced to life behind bars, likely will find out within two weeks whether he’ll be granted bail while Ottawa weighs whether he’s a vic­tim of a wrong­ful conviction.

“I know he’ll be home for Christ­mas,” Ostrowski’s daugh­ter, Amber, said out­side of the Law Courts Build­ing in Win­nipeg this week. “She’ll make the right decision.”

Amber Ostrowski was refer­ring to Jus­tice Colleen Suche, who presided over two days of sub­mis­sions from James Lock­yer of the Asso­ci­a­tion in Defence of the Wrongly Con­victed and Crown attor­ney Rick Saull.

The judge said she needed about 10 days to decide whether Ostrowski should be released on bail. Lock­yer said in court there’s con­sid­er­able — if not over­whelm­ing — evi­dence Ostrowski got a raw deal at his 1987 mur­der trial, in that impor­tant infor­ma­tion was not dis­closed by the Crown and police.

Ostrowski has main­tained his inno­cence since the day he was arrested.

One piece of evi­dence had to do with a secret deal key wit­ness Matthew Lovelace made with fed­eral author­i­ties to tes­tify against Ostrowski in order to get a cocaine-trafficking charge against him withdrawn.

Lovelace tes­ti­fied at Ostrowski’s trial the accused ordered two men to kill Robert Nie­man because Nie­man told police about Ostrowski’s cocaine business.

Lovelace told the jury he did not have a deal to get his drug charge wiped clean in exchange for his tes­ti­mony, but months later he was acquit­ted on the drug charge at a trial where no evi­dence was called.

Saull told the judge the secret deal was not dis­closed because chief pros­e­cu­tor George Dan­ger­field didn’t know about it Lock­yer said the secret deal and other evi­dence involv­ing Lovelace should have been dis­closed to the jury so they had a full pic­ture of Lovelace’s credibility.

Lock­yer said if Ostrowski is released on bail, he’ll be the fifth per­son in Canada claim­ing wrong­ful con­vic­tion to get such treat­ment. Two of the four are Man­i­toba cases, James Driskell and Kyle Unger, who were also pros­e­cuted by Dangerfield.

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